Beyond ‘adoption’: the social relevance of informal child circulation

Despite its prevalence in academic research, formal adoption is actually a specific sort of child placement. The more general phenomenon of the circulation of children could better help us to explain the centrality of minors in broader social milieus, since so-called ‘informal’ placements do frequently act as productive and reproductive strategies with social cohesion purposes that go far beyond the specificity of the punctual child transfer. These forms of child mobility are commonly found in many cultures, including our own in a not so distant past and may become a crucial social structuring factor.